I was born in Christchurch in an old wooden house opposite Hagley Park. Number 9 Bealey Ave to be exact. In a recent moment of oddness I saw a photo in the paper of a mansion in Bealey Ave being demolished after the earthquake. I have no idea of the fate of number 9 and hadn’t really thought about it until seeing that news item. My relatives in other parts of Chch have liveable but rather cracked houses with everything falling everywhere all the time and life in a weird state of shakyness. My cousin sent me a very cool, eerie You Tube of amazing teen boys skateboarding the broken landscape – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2bvozq-KK8

I wrote this bluebells story a good few years ago when I had a column in The Organic Gardener magazine. Then someone suggested I offer it to the Christchurch Press and they published it too. So it’s been around a little and is due for more recycling… Rosie in the picture is my niece.

Rosie in the Hagley Pk Bluebells, 1988ish

Bluebell Memories

In autumn 1964 a young doctor took his three small girls, a couple of trowels and some bluebell bulbs to the park across the road from their Christchurch home. He recalled the magic of the bluebell woods of England, where he had lived in early childhood and again as an adult.

On that day – let’s say it was a cool, bright day, the southern sun weakening as it dropped lower in the sky; let’s say it was a breezy day, blowing the leaves of autumn across the green grass in the ever-changing patterns of life; let’s say it was a happy day, when this family was bound close by its hope and freshness – on that day, the father and his daughters dug small holes in the turf, popped a bulb in each, pressed down the rich soil of the Canterbury Plains and crossed the road back home again.

Autumn miracle

I wonder how many times that winter they rugged up and crossed the road to play in the park, feeding the ducks on the River Avon, riding their tricycles along the path, tossing leaves off the bridge into the gentle waters, then running to the other side to watch their leaf-boat float downstream.

I remember doing those things as a child, and I was the youngest, only three, so it must have been often, and happy. But I don’t recall thinking about the bluebell bulbs lying still in the deep cold of a Christchurch winter.

Our mother is Irish and Dad had promised to bring her home every seven years. That year they made their first trip back. The children and grandparents had never met. We set off on an enormous ship, while the bluebells waited patiently for signs of spring. We crossed the equator, and King Neptune came on board, bearded and brandishing his trident. He climbed out of the sea up the side of the liner, and threw my eldest sister into the swimming pool. I missed out, because I couldn’t swim.

I don’t think we walked in bluebell woods that year, but the next trip was made in spring, and I remember a fairyland forest in Ireland, carpeted in blue.

In the summer of 1965 we moved to Sydney and the bluebell planting was forgotten. The bridge we rode our bikes across now took us to the beach. We dug in the yellow sand and spent summer encrusted with salt and zinc cream.

Me with family, Manly, 1960s

My parents planted bluebells in the warm, sandy seaside soil, but the clump was unimpressive, a delicate reminder of lands left and homes that were past. We kids collected Christmas beetles and cicada shells instead of flowers.

I have never been back to Hagley Park in the spring, but I know that every year the green grass is transformed into a rippling sea of blue. I recently had visitors from Christchurch.

“You know the bluebells in Hagley Park?” I asked mysteriously. They nodded yes, no doubt having never wondered whose mind had the vision and whose hand had disturbed the soil.

“My father planted them,” I said proudly. They looked at me in amazement, as if I had just revealed a truth of creation. “There should be a plaque,” I added thoughtfully. “There should be a plaque.”

Plaque or no plaque, each year the soft drifts of blue reflect the sky and herald the transformation that is spring. Children like us play in them, and like many of the best things in life, they are taken for granted and their origin is their secret.

I am thinking now of a park down the hill from where I live in Hobart. There are daffodils below the silver birches, but no bluebells….Perhaps next autumn when the sky grows cool and dull, I will take the children, and some trowels, and some bulbs and plant more than a plaque.